Every time I step into my garden, I remember how lucky I am. As a Zone 10 Southern California gardener, I can grow food and flowers year round, and so I try to do with it with gratitude and amazement with each new season.
Here are the highlights of my December garden:
The cool season crops I planted in September are ready for harvest, including these wonky little French breakfast radishes, leafy greens and Bok Choy. The Meyer lemons are thisclose to being ready to bring inside.
I'm thinking about making a lemoncello with a few of the lemons. I made it one year (it's very easy and makes a wonderful gift!) and it was like drinking the sun!
Our carrots are coming in after after needing to reseed twice. I'm not sure why they didn't take the first time, as carrots can be finicky about water and temperature, but a few are starting to grow their wispy green tops and hopefully, strong sweet roots below!
I planted the first carrot seeds with my three year old and he keep looking around saying "where are the carrots?" He seemed to be looking for full sized carrots to plant into the soil! So I showed him the seed packet with the pictures of the carrots, and carefully poured out the tiny seeds into his little hand to scatter on top of the soil.
I'm not sure that the idea truly sunk in for him that those little seeds turn into carrots, but I think he'll know when we starting pulling them out in a month or two!
Even though it's almost winter, I still have plenty of color and flowers blooming in the garden. A lime zinnia I bought from Cal State Fullerton's plant sale last spring continues to push out more and more blooms and beautifully tangle itself into the purple cinnamon basil below.
I'm definitely saving seed from this zinnia since makes a great cut flower against all the pinks and white roses I grow and has been wonderfully hardy. Let me know if you'd like some seed for next spring's garden!
As for the roses, it's not quite time to prune (best to prune between NYE and Valentine's day for Zone 10 roses) but it is good to stop cutting them, since cutting encourages more growth. I'm hoping for a few rose hips to make some botanical skin goodies in the next few weeks.
And my little alpine strawberry is starting to bloom! She makes the tiniest, (smaller than a penny), little green berries that taste tart and sweet with notes of green apple. I grew her from seed and she's somehow survived in the strawberry pot for the past three years with little fuss. (Can you tell I love the unfussy plants? Who has time for a fussy plant?!)
Ok not plants, but plant related - I'm so grateful for my husband John, and my father-in-law Mark, for sanding and refinishing the cedar raised beds they made me almost four years ago. They look almost brand new again!
This year they also made me this potting bench for my birthday that you may have seen on some social media posts and look, it's finally clean again! I had to take a photo to document the tidiness, since it likely won't stay this way for long. I'm a messy gardener! (I'm also a messy cook, but that's a different post!)
Now for the native backyard portion:
This Red-flowered Buckwheat, (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) from Theodore Payne Nursery in Sun Valley, CA, has been in the ground for just over a year and seems very happy in this sunny spot of the garden border. I highly recommend this native cultivar as a cut flower option. In the spring and summer the stems were long enough for vases, but as the sun faded, the flower stalk grew shorter, but still seems to bloom year round. She also supports the more than human visitors like birds, bees, caterpillars and butterflies.
The Golden Currant (Ribes aureum) is starting to flower! This one almost got taken over by bindweed, but she’s back and beautiful. She was a free plant from the Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Festival a few years ago, so definitely not part of my original backyard design but we like her and so do the bees and butterflies, so she can stay.
Bee's Bliss sage (Salvia 'Bee's Bliss') is blooming her lavender flowers, and is bringing all the bees to the yard. I love this plant and use her frequently in my client designs. She is susceptible to root rot and fungal diseases, but if she makes it past the first year, she will usually make it. She's a low growing, fast spreading sage that is evergreen, makes a great cut greenery for flower arrangements and is edible, so she get's snipped for our brown butter, sweet potato ravioli nights. Chef's kiss!
This time of year it's slow in my garden, or rather I'm slow in the garden. It's nice to relax after the frenzy of a summer garden with all the watering, cutting, harvesting, processing, and of course, eating. The past two months have mostly been me harvesting lettuce once a week, weeding as I go and starting new seeds.
I'm making sure to water everything since the winter rains aren't here yet, but it's easy gardening until January seed starting where we can all collectively dream about spring.
Until then, I hope whatever you are tending to right now is nourishing you right back.
Happy Gardening!
Kristy
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